Recess appointments are easy to stop. Just don't take recesses. Spend more time working, the public won't mind.

7:31 am July 8, 2010

Cassie wrote:

You might want to revise the first sentence: Medicare and Medicare? or Medicare and Medicaid?

10:37 am July 8, 2010

Colin wrote:

Eric,
I would much rather have congress not working than what they are doing to our country at the moment.

11:23 am July 8, 2010

Disgusted wrote:

Following is an excerpt from a 2004 article by Berwick (Lessons from developing nations on improving health care, BMJ 2004;328:1124–1129). Since when is Russia "resource starved"? And if so, could central planning have anything to do with it? HERE IS THE EXCERPT:

Perhaps the best healthcare improvement projects in resource poor settings, arguably some of the best anywhere, are now under way in Russia under the expert guidance of Rashad Massoud, one of the foremost experts in large scale improvement. Dr Massoud and his Russian colleagues started projects in two of the 89 Russian states focusing on specific, high burden conditions. In Tver, the targets included respiratory distress syndrome in infants and pregnancy induced hypertension in women. In Tula, efforts focused on adult hypertension. All these conditions are often fatal in Russia. The projects include improvement teams and redesign efforts, again using the model for improvement, in collaborative structures linking several sites—clinics or hospitals—in a common system of measurement, testing, and learning together. Tula began with 20 clinics, expanding within 18 months to over 500. Tver began with five hospitals and their associated maternity clinics, expanding to all 42 hospitals in the state and every maternity clinic....
The achievements in Russia illustrate well a premise that many quality improvement experts have tried to teach the Western world for decades—namely, that higher quality (often far higher quality) can cost less (often far less) than defective quality. It is surprising that such efficiencies can be found in settings as resource starved as Tver and Tula…

11:52 am July 8, 2010

MedicalMind wrote:

You are missing an important point. Berwick is aligned with the insurance (banking) industry. He is their poster boy. His Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is a nonprofit arm of managed care. Just look at the grant-support roster. It is funded almost entirely by the insurance companies, banks and the Macy Foundation (yet another non-profit arm of the insurance industry).
Berwick's son worked closely with Dodd on health care issues. Father and son Berwick seem to be extensions of Grassley/Frist/Dodd/HCA philosophy. What is the philosophy? Profiteering and control of all things healthcare by the insurance (banking) industry. This choreography has been going on since the inception of Kaiser Permamente, followed up by Regan's 1980 deregulation of the insurance and medical institutions, made even stronger by the introduction of managed care, and now the Obama health plan. Who is profiting from these changes? The insurance/banking industry. Both are raking in the largest profits in their histories, at the expense of US citizens and the collapse of multiple viable businesses and one of the world's best health care nations. Berwick appears to support patient-centered care, socialized medicine...but all these 'innocent' sounding concepts simply pad the pockets of managed care. As long as healthcare costs are contained, the insurance companies continue to realize even greater profit percentages.
The communications company that supports IHI happens to support communications for several of the largest banks in the world. Coincidence? I think not.
Obama prefers not to adhere to the democratic process. Unfortunately, he is a puppet for an organization that is the true leadership of our bankrupt (we don't even have a GNP and owe trillions to China) and corrupt country. It is all quite tragic. We've stood by and watched as we've lost our country to foreign interests and greed. :(
Buckle your seat belts, it is going to be a bumpy ride.

1:16 pm July 8, 2010

disappointed wrote:

The rhetoric here is fatigueing.
I didn't hear Republicans screaming when Bush made recess appointments.
The comment with the quote about Russia seems to criticize that he looked to Russia for an example, rather than the results that were produced.
Criticizing the insurance industry is easy and fun, but half the industry is already non-profit and overall the industry runs with margins less than most industries. On administrative costs - I have heard charities brag about administrative costs in the 15-20% range that insurance companies have.

There are hugh challenges in health care, tehse type of petty arguments don't get us closer to any solutions.

4:05 pm July 13, 2010

Brian K wrote:

Just another example of the smokey roomed, closed-door nature of the Obama Administration. Dr. Berwick is a controversial figure who views healthcare delivery as another area for wealth redistribution. So be it. But the Constitution prescribes an "advise and consent" function for Congress as a check on Executive power. In another example of hypocrisy what was promised as the most transparent Administration is anything but.

As far as the IHI, and all other centrally planned health quality think tanks, they more often than not interpose algorithms between the patient and his/her physician in manners that do anything but increase quality. As examples, we were mandated to use "tight glucose control" in ICU patients as a reportable measure of quality, that is until follow up studies demonstrated increased mortality among patients managed under this protocol. Same applies for peri-operative anti-biotic administration. ION this case the rules regulate use in the peri-operative period in order to reduce post-op wound infections. Only thing is last month JAMA published a study demonstrating that the algorithmic management did nothing to reduce wound infections, the explicit goal of the regulation. <Adherence
to Surgical Care
Improvement Project Measures and the Association with Postoperative
Infections, JAMA. 2010;303(24):2479-2485>

I suppose results still count, but in a large top down bureaucracy who knows??!!!

11:41 pm July 14, 2010

Dito wrote:

Hard line republican has become synonymous with whiner, sore loser, and hypocrite. I would like to take all government benefits away from those who want no government, who insist that all government is unnecessary, including our elected republican leaders who enjoy outstanding GOVERNMENT benefits, read perks, as part of their service to their country. If they were true to their principles, they would resign, en mass, immediately, to reduce the size and influence of government. They want a benign dictatorship instead of a democracy, as if any dictatorship could remain benign for long.

11:31 am July 21, 2010

jack wrote:

Medicare cost has gone up and up, and so did the part a and part be deductibles. They raised my part b cost too. This happens every year almost. Plus my medicare supplement plan kept going up too, I finally had enough of that and found a new one online, that saved me over 60 a month, I suggest to other seniors to do the same, to help relive the rising cost of medicare, I used http://nationalmedicaresupplements.com/ but there are many good website to search for a god medicare supplement plan, I think plan f is the best.

Posts about Simple Launcher written by thecake
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Simple Launcher 2
2. June 2011
thecake Leave a comment
As some of you may know, I have done an application called вЂSimple LauncherвЂ™. ItвЂ™s purpose is to provide an easy way to have a multitouch user interface to start other applications.
By pressing a small button on one of the controls it switches between container and bar-mode. In container-mode the user can dragвЂ™nвЂ™drop an application to a different container (or bar) and in bar-mode he can scroll through or launch applications. Empty containers will be remove automatically and new ones can be created via a button on the top. The user may also change the background by selecting a .jpg file. (Backgrounds are stored in ./Backgrounds and the selection is saved.)
Here is a video of the application running on a HP Touchsmart notebook:
Simple Launcher 2 Demo

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Washington Wire is one of the oldest standing features in American journalism. Since the Wire launched on Sept. 20, 1940, the Journal has offered readers an informal look at the capital. Now online, the Wire provides a succession of glimpses at what’s happening behind hot stories and warnings of what to watch for in the days ahead. The Wire is led by Reid J. Epstein, with contributions from the rest of the bureau. Washington Wire now also includes Think Tank, our home for outside analysis from policy and political thinkers.